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среда, 8 октября 2014 г.

Threat to Syrian town tests patience for U.S. strategy

By Phil Stewart

The threat from Islamic State
fighters to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani is an early test of the U.S.-led
coalition's patience for a military strategy that at the moment cannot hold
ground in Syria.

As President Barack Obama met
with top brass at the Pentagon on Wednesday, his administration sought to set
low expectations for what U.S.-led air strikes could accomplish in Syria's
ground war, and acknowledged Kobani may fall into the clutch of Islamic State,
also known as ISIL, in the days ahead.

Secretary of State John Kerry
said the loss of the town would not be a strategic defeat. Other officials
stressed the focus of the campaign remained Iraq and that air strikes in Syria
were intended to initially degrade Islamic State in neighboring Iraq before
ultimately destroying them over the long term in both countries.

That strategy, however,
requires Western patience that grows thinner with each headline of gruesome
Islamic State atrocities and jihadist military victories, or videos depicting
beheadings of American or British hostages.

"Evidence is mounting that
an 'Iraq first' approach focused on air strikes isn't degrading ISIL. From
Kobani to Baghdad they are using their Syrian sanctuary to make gains,"
said Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

If Kobani fell, Islamic State
fighters would control more than half of Syria's 510-mile (820-km) border with
Turkey, a NATO ally, which could also face further civil unrest over Ankara's
inaction, said Soner Cagaptay at Turkish Research Program at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.

An Islamic State victory in
Kobani could also lead to greater brutality against Kurds on the ground,
Cagaptay said. "If Kobani fell, the pictures that would come out of there
would be so horrific ... the world's reaction would obviously be
sharpened."

GROUND FORCE

The Pentagon cautioned that
there are limits to what air strikes can do in Syria before Western-backed,
moderate Syrian opposition forces are strong enough to repel them. Obama has
ruled out sending American forces on a combat mission there.

"In Syria, right now we
just don't have a ground force that we can work with," said Rear Admiral
John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Getting a U.S.-trained ground
force in Syria will take time. Kirby cautioned the military will need up to
five months to get through the process of recruiting and screening opposition
members for a U.S. training program in Saudi Arabia.

"That's before you even
start doing any of the training. So this is going to be a long-term
effort," Kirby said.

Military experts say the world
community must accept occasional setbacks in Syria, at least until those
Western-backed forces can move in on the ground.

"We're limited to what's
doable from the air (in Syria) and have to be accepting that we're going to
have setbacks like this until we can get a proper air-ground operation
going," said retired Lieutenant General James Dubik, who oversaw training
of Iraqi forces during the Bush administration.

Christopher Harmer, a former
Navy aviator who is an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think
tank, cautioned that until then, the Islamic State would rely on tactics to
evade being easily targeted from the air.

"Air power is very good at
striking static targets - take a bridge, a refinery," Harmer said.

"The problem the strategy
so far has had is that you have a bunch of aircraft flying missions against a
bunch of dispersed individuals, small infantry forces, and it's clearly not
been very effective."

So far, the Pentagon says that
fits its strategy, which is designed to stop the Islamic State from using Syria
as a "headquarters," a kind of sanctuary to resupply, finance and
command troops operating in Iraq.

Even in Iraq, however, progress
has been uneven.

That's despite a presence of
U.S. military forces advising Iraqi and Kurdish troops and the expansion of
U.S.-led air strikes this week to the use of Apache helicopters - which expose
American troops to greater risk of ground fire.

"We know that ISIL is going
to continue to grab ground and there are going to continue to be villages and
towns and cities that they take," Kirby said.

"So when we get up here
and we say it's going to be a long struggle and it's going to be difficult, and
when we get up here and say airpower - military power alone ... isn't going to
be enough to fix it, we really mean it."

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YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).